


Clarity of Mind

by thundercaya



Series: The Elevator Incident [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Overthinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:30:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7115464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thundercaya/pseuds/thundercaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madison had already known from working closely with Hamilton in the past that the man had a death wish. Having one himself, it wasn't hard to recognize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity of Mind

When he had clarity of mind that wasn't possible with a full bladder, Madison wished he had exited the elevator with a little more dignity. No, he hadn't been exaggerating how urgently he'd needed to go, but he knew now that the feeling had been amplified by not knowing _when_ he'd be able to. Fifteen minutes wasn't all that long, and he really _could_ have walked out of the elevator, thanked the man who had gotten it running again, told Thomas that yes, he was fine, and _then_ taken care of what needed to be taken care of. But he hadn't _done_ that, and people had _seen_ him run, and now that it was in the past where he couldn't do anything about it, of course he couldn't stop thinking about it.

That wasn't the only thing that had been on his mind since then. Madison had already known from working closely with Hamilton in the past that the man had a death wish. Having one himself, it wasn't hard to recognize, though he didn't think it had ever been so blatant as it was in that elevator. Casually talking about running out of air or the elevator falling, and participating in a conversation about his hypothetical murder, not even arguing with the idea that someone might one day become angry enough with him to kill him. It wasn't even just a taste for the morbid, either. Hamilton had become visibly uncomfortable by the idea of Madison slicing himself open, as if Madison would have actually done it, as if Madison hadn't said it just to have something to say. Madison supposed that Hamilton's experience in the war could have something to do with that. Surely Hamilton had gotten more than his share of watching people die.

Madison had his own experience with that. Not on the same scale, but he had lost two siblings to illness. And why? Why them and not him? Wasn't he the sick one? He'd tried to justify living by filling his life with accomplishments, but that never quite did the trick, because who was to say _they_ couldn't have achieved those same things, or more? He didn't know anything about Hamilton's family--his childhood family, that was. Everyone knew about Hamilton's lovely wife and perfect children. But someone must have died. Someone always did. And one could learn to live with it, maybe barely, but there was no getting over it, no moving past it, and no replacing them. Not with a lovely wife and perfect children (not that Madison had experience with this, but he could see well enough that it hadn't fixed Hamilton), and not with friends.

Which brought him to that third thing he'd been thinking about since the elevator incident.

He had told Hamilton that Thomas Jefferson wasn't his friend.

Of course he'd been fucking with Hamilton, being as much of a dick as he possibly could with just a few words, to punish the man for daring to ask about Thomas. Because Thomas _was_ his friend, the best friend he currently had, the best friend he had _ever_ had. Certainly better than Hamilton.

Thomas hadn't asked Madison about his conversation with Hamilton, which either meant that Hamilton hadn't told him, or that he had and Thomas just didn't want to talk about it. If it were the second option, there were even more options as to why. First, Thomas understood all on his own that Madison was simply deflecting the topic. Second, Thomas did _not_ understand, took the statement to heart, and was too hurt to bring it up. Third, Thomas _did_ understand, but was still worried that there might have been _some_ truth to it, and was afraid to ask.

All in all, Madison _hoped_ Hamilton just hadn't told him, because no matter what he might tell Thomas if Thomas asked, he couldn't tell himself that the feeling behind third option wasn't true. When he'd sought the friendship of Thomas Jefferson, it was with political advantage in mind. The fact that he had come to genuinely enjoy the man's company and to think fondly of him could not change that. Worse was that there were others in Madison's past that Madison had enjoyed for some time before thoroughly discarding them for some reason or another. Alexander Hamilton, for example. George Washington, for another. He had no plans to discard Thomas, but he knew that if he needed to, he absolutely could. Once it happened, if it happened, he wouldn't even feel bad about it, never had any time before.

Hamilton was wrong so often about so many things, but as the saying--more archaic every day--went, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Hamilton was right about several things in those fifteen minutes alone, one of them being his observation that Madison was cold.

Of course, he was actually quite warm at this precise moment, feeling rather feverish from agonizing over his conversation with Hamilton. It was just what Madison did. Thought too much about things that probably didn't matter, worried about them until he wore himself out and made himself sick, and then he didn't think about them anymore unless he got a reminder. Why should he care if someone thought it was funny that he'd launched out of the elevator when that couldn't undo his accomplishments or detract from his ideas? Why should he care about Hamilton's death wish when he hardly cared about his own, and hardly cared about Hamilton as a person? Why should he care _now_ how Thomas would feel if their friendship was ever thrown away when he knew he wouldn't care _then_? Madison had to get in front of this. He had to own it. He had make it look like he saw the whole thing as an amusing incident rather than a springboard into his latest spiral. The next time he saw Hamilton, Madison's opening line--delivered while fiddling with a pen that neither wrote upside down nor had a comfortable grip--would be; "I would kill for a place to pee right now."


End file.
